


all the ashes in my wake

by emmett



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Families, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Recovery, Season 2 ish, self-injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22949092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmett/pseuds/emmett
Summary: Derek doesn't deserve this kind of second chance, but they do, and it's his turn to try this again.In which Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things
Relationships: Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	all the ashes in my wake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [triffidesque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/triffidesque/gifts).



> This is a birthday present to my best bud Greer (who i love very much). It's only a whole five years late... IIRC correctly the idea spawned from our shared belief that Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, our love of recovery fic + found families, and also "I Wanna Get Better" by The Bleachers (speaking of which, there's a playlist for this at [bit.ly/alltheashes](bit.ly/alltheashes) if ur interested). 
> 
> Betaing by [illimerence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illimerence) who is both my nbbf + my hero
> 
> Set in a sort of nebulous end-of-season-two era a) because that's where I was when I started writing this and b) because I do what I want. I'm honestly not too sure how much canon I have thrown out the window since it's been so long since I watched.
> 
> CW: there's a scene near the end with some plot-relevant self-injury. It's only a short line, and not 'self-harm' in intention, nor particularly graphic, but it may be triggering or intense for some folks, so please look after yourself!

1.

Despite the frantic way he built his pack, searching out lost teens like his life depended on it (it did), despite the gaping hole left where pack should be, Derek doesn’t even realise he’s lonely until he sees Cora’s face.

It hits like a train. His baby sister’s face, something he’s begged and prayed and cried to see again, just once, and there she is. Alive and snarling and furious and _family._

And just like that, Derek isn’t alone again.

Except he is. 

She’s there, close enough to touch, to sob over, and all he can feel in the space between them is the ghost of all those missing. Of mom and dad and Laura and Andrew and Sam. The people who aren’t there to see Cora, strong and brave and wiser than she should be because--

Because of Derek.

He doesn’t deserve to have her back, doesn’t deserve any of them: not Isaac, not Erica, not Boyd. He isn’t a saviour of lost souls anymore. He doesn’t want to see them as a necessary evil, only there because none of them will survive alone. 

Derek wants pack. He wants to help Boyd with his homework, to threaten Erica’s boyfriends even though she’s more than capable of hurting them herself. He wants to sit with Isaac, teach him to breathe through the panic and step forward into a future he can’t believe exists.

He wants to be able to tell them they did good.

They stare at him across the loft, lost and uncertain. Scared.

Of Derek.

He leaves them there. Goes to his room. Sleeps.

He dreams about Talia. It’s something that happens. He relives moments, arguments, times he should have listened, times he should have been a better son.

He’s fourteen this time, sitting at the kitchen table while Talia stares him down.

“I don’t want to hang out with her, mom! She’s a _kid_.”

“She’s your sister, Derek.”

His fourteen year old shoulders heave in a sigh. “She’s _annoying_.”

Talia’s gaze goes hard, and a little disappointed. “She’s pack, Derek. Pack looks out for pack, no matter what.”

“Why doesn’t she have to look out for me then?” he complains, and even if Derek can’t stop the way this plays out (he never can), he can see it now, the moment where his mother explains that she’s too young, he’s stronger and it’s his job to look out for those who can’t. Knows that if he’d listened instead of storming out then maybe things would have been different. Maybe they would have been there for each other instead of isolated and alone.

“She already is,” Talia says.

And that’s, that’s not in the script, that’s not how this went; except now Talia’s looking him in the eyes but she’s looking up, like he’s a six foot man not a five foot brat.

“She is, Derek,” Talia says, putting a hand on his arm. “Try this again.”

There’s chatter downstairs when he wakes, and when he inches down the stairs, Cora’s sitting on the couch, Isaac at one side while Erica and Boyd curl together on the chair. She’s telling stories, Derek patching up her knees after a bike trick gone wrong, despite the fact she was healed before the band-aids were even stuck down; about how he loved Paige to distraction, would spend hours asking Laura and Sam for ideas of what to give his mystery girlfriend.

He wants to rip her throat out for telling them, for making him look vulnerable and weak. He doesn’t.

His betas still smell wary, but not one of them flinches when he walks past, and he knows what longing smells like. He can feel it rolling off them: this want for a family, a pack that means something.

He doesn’t deserve this kind of second chance, but Cora does, and it’s his turn to try this again.

2.

Cora hasn’t seen the house. Not close.

Derek doesn’t want to take her, doesn’t want his baby sister standing in a ruin that smells like home and death in a way you can’t separate out again, doesn’t want her breathing in the ash of their family.

He takes her because she wants to go. He’s not big bad alpha Derek anymore. He’s a brother again.

It smells bad from the outside, but within it’s overpowering, the scent of smoke only briefly obscured by the blood and gore of the last year. She steps softly, through faded afterimages of tumbles down the stairs and board games at the dining table.

“It has to go,” she says into his shoulder, and he puts an arm around her, because he can. 

“All of it. If we ever want to start again, it has to be from scratch.”

The demolition is scheduled to start Monday morning, and Sunday, Derek goes back one last time. He finds his room, runs his hands through the ash and pretends it’s the remnants of letters from Kate; pretends there’s a way to apologise to his younger self, to say goodbye, good luck.

There’s creaking on the deck, and Scott’s voice, asking if he’s there.

They meet in the hall, and Scott’s halfway out the door. Derek can’t blame him.

“There was- I knew you were here,” Scott says, stilted, as though he doesn’t understand that that’s a good thing. “You smelled sad, but not, like, angry. It was weird.”

Derek very nearly bursts into hysterical laughter. Scott is so good, too good. He should be willing to tear Derek to pieces by this point, but he isn’t. He’s sun and grass and air and the pack needs him. Derek needs him.

He has no right to ask, but he does.

“We’re doing lunch at the loft. Cora’s cooking. Do you want to come?”

And damn him, he does.

It’s tense, and it’s awkward, but no one bolts, and everyone eats, and when they’re all full and relaxing and poking fun at each other, Cora smiles. Dad always said nothing settles a pack better than good food. He was right, and Derek’s so proud of Cora it hurts.

3.

Scott comes over again, and he brings Stiles. Then Stiles brings Lydia and Lydia brings Allison and that’s the afternoon Derek can barely breathe until Stiles cracks a joke and Allison flushes, stumbling over a retort and then just poking her tongue out at him.

It’s not smooth, it’s not clever and _she’s not Kate._

He hugs her when it’s time for them to leave. Because he can, and because she understands, even if neither of them want to.

(The fact that Stiles trips in shock and goes sprawling across the rug doesn’t hurt either.)

Derek isn’t sure how he gets through the end of the school year. He has at least half the pack at the loft every afternoon, in various stages of pulling their hair out. He doesn’t know how many panic attacks he talks down, how many scraps he breaks up, how many lost essay drafts he locates.

It’s draining, frustrating and incessant, especially near the full moon; but everytime he feels like throwing in the towel (or throwing a teenager), he breathes. He remembers his parents doing the same. He remembers he never thought he’d have even this, that even after all he’s done he has people that trust him, and he owes them all he can give in return.

It’s the Sunday before the first week of finals, and the loft is in a state of fragile peace when his cellphone rings. He isn’t sure who put Mellisa McCall’s number in his phone, but she’s calling and Derek has a feeling he’s going to be on the wrong end of a shotgun very soon.

“Um, hello. Derek speaking,” he says, drawing on every memory he has of his mom berating his phone manners.

(Somewhere upstairs, Cora laughs so hard she chokes.)

“Oh Derek, hi, is Scott there?” She sounds harried and maybe a little concerned, but there’s no anger. “Only, I’m on the night shift and I know he’s nervous about finals so I called to check on him and he’s not there and I know he visits you a lot and-“

“Yes, he’s here,” Derek cuts in, because manners come second to averting motherly panic. “He was getting anxious so we picked him up. He’s meditating with Allison and Lydia.”

“He’s _meditating_?”

“I don’t think he had much choice, Mrs McCall. Lydia’s very convincing.”

She snorts at that, but it’s a proud snort, a universal appreciation for Lydia Martin and her mysterious ways.

“Are they staying the night there?”

“I’m not sure,” Derek says, which is a lie. They’re calmer together. They sleep better. “I can take him home if you like.”

“No, that’s okay. Just make sure he gets to the exam. And have him text me when he’s done meditating?”

“Of course, Mrs McCall.”

“You can call me Melissa,” she insists. “And Derek? Thank you.”

He wants to tell her it’s really truly nothing, he’s just doing his best to make it up to these kids, but she’s gone and Derek’s left staring at his phone in confusion.

“Alright there, sourwolf?” Stiles asks, opening the fridge and grabbing a jug of water. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He freezes a split second later and grabs Derek’s sleeve with a familiar look of panic in his eyes. “Please, _please_ tell me ghosts aren’t real. Not this week.”

“They’re not,” Derek says, putting a heavy hand on Stiles’ shoulder. He’s learnt in the last three weeks that giving Stiles something to ground him is the easiest way to avoid a panic attack. “Not this week, and not any other week.”

Stiles relaxes. “Then what’s with the face?”

“Your parents know you hang out here.” Derek tries to make it a question, having been told on many an occasion that his passive-aggressive statements don’t make for good communication, but it fails at the last minute.

Stiles doesn’t seem bothered. “Well yeah, you didn’t think we were lying to them did you?”

“Well, no, not exactly. I just figured if they knew there’d be more bullets involved.”

“Friday’s pizza was courtesy of my dad. He thinks you’re weird, but he also likes it when I get good grades and actually make it to class on time.”

Stiles pours a glass of water in silence, chewing at his lip.

“You’re a good alpha, Derek. You’re brooding and kinda creepy sometimes and totally a sourwolf, but you’re our brooding, creepy sourwolf.”

4.

Isaac fucks up in June. Derek fucks up two days later.

Their final results come in and Isaac says nothing, stays quiet as Stiles crows with triumph and Lydia and Allison elbow each other in pride. Erica shoves her letter in Derek’s face, grin just about splitting her face in half, and even Boyd tells him quietly what grades he got. 

Derek assumes Isaac doesn’t want to talk because he has too many bad memories to feel comfortable sharing. Maybe he doesn’t know how.

He lets them loose to go party, figuring they deserve the chance to blow off steam, that half of them can’t get drunk anyway and they’re safe enough together. He doesn’t think for a second that their parents would be particularly happy, but he has no illusions about keeping teenagers from having fun.

Derek sends them off, puts his phone on to charge and sprawls on the couch like an old man.

Most of the pack comes tumbling home in the morning. Isaac doesn’t.

He suppresses his panic, making phonecall after pointless phonecall while the kids mainline coffee and breakfast, everyone of them looking sufficiently ashamed at having lost track of one of their own.

Derek doesn’t even have to tell them off.

It’s well into the early hours of the next day before they find him, two towns over, mostly out to it in the back of a shitty club. His hands and face are bloodied and bruised and Derek is _terrified_ until he leans in realises Isaac’s gone off on some sort of aconite-laced bender.

He throws Isaac over his shoulder with a growl and stomps out of the building. Fucking teenagers. Give them the power not to get hurt doing stupid shit and they inevitably find a way to manage it.

Isaac gets tossed in the back seat with Cora and Derek spends the rest of the drive trying to ignore everything that isn’t the road. Boyd sits in the front and despite himself Derek’s proud, proud that Boyd’s been paying enough attention to know that the pack is a feedback loop, having the strength to sit there and send out _calm_ in waves. He’s giving Derek something to hold on to, something to lean on, and it makes him sick that the kids have to do that for him.

Cora finds the wolfsbane ash when they get back and dumps it in a bottle of gatorade for Isaac to drink. He downs it like he’s dying of thirst, blue dripping off his chin, and the cuts start to heal, the bruises fade. He sits on the couch looking exhausted and out of it and Derek can’t even decide what to ask first. _Why did you do it? Where did you get aconite laced liquor? Why run so far to get it?_

He settles with the all encompassing “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Isaac’s head looks like it can’t possibly drop further, but it does.

“I failed chemistry.”

Derek wants to growl, to let his wolf snarl at Isaac’s til he cowers and behaves, He wants this simple but it _isn’t_. He knows why Isaac reacted, but it doesn’t make sense. Derek isn’t Mr Lahey, he’s not going to hurt him because of a grade. He thought he’d made it clear, these months and months of work and caring and aborted freakouts.

“I’m not going to _hurt you_ ,” he says, reining in his anger as best he can, which is not much at all. “I’m trying to protect you. I can’t do that if you’re going to run away and drink poison like it’s kool aid because you’re too scared to talk to me.”

Cora’s glaring at him from across the room and he _does not need that right now_.

“What is this, Isaac?” His eyes are flashing red now, and Isaac’s staring at him, pulling into himself and still saying nothing. “Do you even want to be here?”

Isaac stumbles over his words like they take him unawares. “I just needed to go, to get out, I-”

It bursts out of Derek, the months of anger and frustration, swirling around with nowhere to go.

“ _Then GET OUT,”_ he roars, loud enough to shake the doors.

Isaac bolts. Out the door with nothing in hand, without a jacket or a set of keys, and Cora only spends a moment glaring at Derek before she’s out the door after him.

It isn’t until they’re both long out of earshot that Derek thinks that maybe Isaac was less scared and more worried about letting Derek down.

It takes another half hour to realise it wasn’t about him at all.

He asks Boyd to text everyone and tell them Isaac’s safe, then he says he’ll be back in the morning, changes into sweatpants and runs. He runs out to the preserve, to the boundary line that circles most of Beacon Hills and follows it. He runs until even his werewolf lungs are burning, then climbs a tree just because he can. 

He runs until he isn’t thinking about anything other than the ground under him, the rhythm of his breath and the way the forest sounds at dawn. He keeps running until the anger’s gone, until the guilt collapses into a ball small enough to push around, something he can hold aside long enough to fix things.

Boyd’s asleep on the couch when he gets in, stirs enough at Derek’s arrival that Derek tells him to go to bed. He watches Boyd trudge up the stairs and takes a shower. Turns the water hot and bright enough to make him brave.

When he’s dry, he calls Cora.

“I’m not picking up,” she says, when she picks up.

“Uh…”

“I’m picking up to tell you that I’m intentionally not picking up. Didn’t want you to think I just hadn’t heard the call. Bye.”

“Cora, wait-” Some of the desperation in his voice must get through because the line doesn’t go dead.

“I fucked up. I really fucked up. I need to fix it and I don’t want to make it worse. Can you help me figure out how?”

She’s a better Hale than he ever was because she does. Tells him in explicit and varied terms exactly what he did wrong. She tells him Isaac’s a mess and the only reason she could slip away to take the call is that he’s passed out between Allison and Scott (who are furious at Derek on Isaac’s behalf). She says they need to let Isaac rest and when he’s awake then he can decide when to talk. She promises to tell him as much.

The next twenty four hours are awful.

Cora texts at noon. **Lunch at McCall house**.

Derek wants to run but he drives, takes Boyd with him. He can’t keep himself perfectly calm yet, but Boyd can. 

His damn temper is what set this all off and he’s going to swallow his pride and take the help he needs.

Melissa answers the door and says nothing as she waves them inside. Her expression gives nothing away.

Cora’s leaning on the kitchen counter, Allison’s setting the table, and Isaac is practically glued to Scott’s side on the couch. Derek steels himself. Settles himself and speaks.

“Isaac, could we talk?”

Isaac nods shakily, follows him out onto the deck and Derek sits first, pulse slowing when Isaac sits without much hesitation. 

“I’m sorry,” he starts. “I reacted out of fear and anger and I shouldn’t have.”

“I made you worry.”

“I should have grounded you, not kicked you out.”

Isaac tenses, looking so much like a teenage boy and so little like a werewolf. Derek wonders when he ran out of fight.

“You’re not kicked out anymore. And if anyone, I should be grounded.”

He gets an amused snort in response and Derek wishes he could take credit for that. It’s Stilinski material but it’s doing the job. He’ll buy Stiles a soda next time he sees him.

“You don’t have to come back if you don’t want to.” Derek wants them all back, wants the loft to smell like sweaty teenagers and stale pizza and home. “And you certainly don’t have to come back straight away... but it’s home if you want it.”

They’re both quiet for a while, until Melissa calls out cautiously from inside that lunch is ready.

“Tomorrow,” Isaac says. “Can I come home tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Derek says, because ‘of course’ sounds condescending and ‘please’ is too heavy.

“Isaac,” he says, just before they step back inside, “You did good.”

“I failed chemistry.”

Derek puts a hand on his shoulder, catches his eye. “You did _good_.”

5.

They make it through the rest of the summer in one piece. Cora decides to stay, for now, and enrols in a class at the college. The teenagers go back to school and Derek spends a week _not moping_ before Cora starts a tussle that ends with Derek winded on his back in less time than it takes to snarl, and tells him to get a job.

He speaks to the local library manager, flashes his best smile and walks out with a job. They manage a whole week with nothing to worry about before it all goes spectacularly off the rails. 

It starts with a swarm of moths, followed by an entire flock of crows throwing themselves through the windows at the high school, deer running into traffic by the dozen. Cora calls them signs; Stiles calls them omens. Derek refuses to give them that much credit -- until a lightning storm hits a copse of trees on the preserve and the stench of ash chases him all the way across town.

Stiles texts in the morning: **meteorologists scratching their heads. trees burnt to a crisp. didn’t spread any further.** And this time, Derek asks him to look into it.

Two days later he gets a panicked phonecall at eight in the morning. That afternoon they find Scott’s bike lying on its side off one of the backroads that winds past the preserve.

As far as they can tell, Scott never made it home from Deaton’s they day before. There’s no blood, no damage to the bike and, most importantly, no Scott. It's over a day since he went missing by the time they find it, and Derek's followed older tracks, but something about this trail feels cold. Like it's trying to tell him not to bother, that there's no point. It feels like tracking Laura.

Derek pushes down the panic in his throat, follows his nose until he hits a wall of smoke and ash where the lightning hit and the trail ends. He circles around, trying to pick it up again, but there's nothing. He calls Boyd and Erica and Isaac and they turn up with Cora in tow and it takes all his willpower not to drag her away from there. 

"It's not you," Boyd says an hour later when they're still coming up empty. "He's just gone."

Telling Melissa is awful. She says nothing. Derek is clinging to the fact there was no blood and tells her as much. She nods, steady and silent but she’s shimmering with the panic she’s holding in.

He goes to Stiles next, finds him in his bedroom. His research on the omens is in a pile in the corner and Stiles is looking into tracking spells with more fervour than Derek’s ever seen. 

“Stiles. Leave it,” he says, because he spoke to Deaton already and knows that it won’t work, that something’s blocking Scott’s location from them, knows they need to be smart about this.

Stiles doesn’t take it very well. He snaps a pencil in his fist and he’s up and in Derek’s face so fast he very nearly gets clawed.

“Don’t you fucking _dare_ tell me to leave it!”

“I just meant to focus on the omens, this is pointle-”

Stiles grabs the front of his shirt, hauls Derek forward. “I don’t give a _fuck_ about this mysterious bad thing that’s going to happen! Scott is _missing_ . _This_ is the only bad I care about.”

Derek keeps his mouth shut, stares right back and waits for the penny to drop. He can spot the moment it does, Stiles’ eyebrows flying toward his hairline as he pushes away and just about throws himself at the pile in the corner. His mouth moving fast and silent until he looks up at Derek and croaks, “Do you have a map?”

“At the loft.”

They gather the lot up, two messy armfuls and then it’s down the stairs and out the door, stopping just long enough for Stiles to wrench the calendar off the wall in the kitchen.

Derek drives the jeep. Stiles’ has too much of his mind on the omens, shuffling and reshuffling, somehow holding five piles separate on his lap.

For once, Stiles makes it inside before Derek does, ignoring the table for the floor. Derek sees why within minutes, when Stiles has maps and pages taking up half the floor space. He fishes a marker out from somewhere and starts scrawling, marking omens and flight paths and copying them onto the calendar.

He flicks back and forth so fast one of the pages rips, and Derek slices them all apart, lays them out in a grid and things start to make a terrifying amount of sense. The omens go back months, further probably, sporadic if you’re not paying attention, but lined up it’s easy to see the pattern, every four weeks, on a new moon.

Until the last new moon, that is, because at that point they pick up, one every few days. 

“Four nights, and then another,” Stiles says, “Like clockwork. Seven repeats, with the storm on Sunday.”

Stiles goes silent.

“Stiles?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Thursday.”

“I know.”

Derek’s not sure how it could have taken him this long to make the connection, because it’s sitting there on the calendar in glossy printed ink. Thursday 5th. New Moon.

“He’s gonna die,” Stiles chokes out, because there really is no other conclusion to draw from this.

Derek drags him from the dates, from the black and white screaming that they’re running out of time, and pushes him toward the map, suddenly glad for all the practice he’s had at keeping Stiles grounded.

“We have time yet. Think. Where is he?”

Two hours later and they’re nowhere. Derek’s pulled up every book on the region he can think of. They’ve spun the map around, looked at it in the mirror, everything and anything, and Stiles is tearing out the bits of hair he can get a grip on, so when his phone buzzes with a text, Derek isn’t even slightly surprised to see it go flying. 

He is surprised to see Stiles diving after it a moment later, fumbling and nearly dropping it twice as he dials.

“Danny I fucking love you! No that wasn’t a confession you ass, now email me your project. Yes that one. Why would I bother copying it, I don’t even take that class. Just send me the damn thing now or I swear to god I’ll hurt you. Yes okay fine whatever you want. _Now_ Danny.”

Stiles’ eyes are shining when he comes up for air after ending the call.

“What?” Derek asks. 

“Just hang on, one second.”

The phone bings again and Stiles grabs a second marker, copying lines from the tiny screen to the map in front of him, curving lines that cross each other at points marked on the map already as omens.

“And!” Stiles says, and pulls the Calendar over, numbering the marks, and it’s easy now to see the crooked spiral, moving in on the preserve.

“Here,” he points at a point where three of the lines intersect, right in the centre of the spiral.

Derek swallows hard, tamping down on the bile in his throat. “That’s the nemeton.”

“The what?”

And how do you explain something like that? “It’s a tree. Or it was. It was cut down years ago, but it’s powerful, ancient. It was important to the druids, to my family. They said cutting it down was bad luck. That it was dangerous.”

Stiles doesn’t ask any more, just lurches out of the room, snatching his keys as he goes. Derek wants to stop him, tell him to wait, to call for backup, but the sun set while they were talking. They can’t have long left.

So they get in the jeep and drive, Stiles sending a rushed text to the others. Derek drives as far into the preserve as he can, but half a mile out from the nemeton the Jeep grinds to a halt.

“That better not be permanent,” is all Stiles says, hauling his baseball bat out of the trunk and stuffing god knows what into his pockets.

They keep pace well enough, between Derek’s tenuous restraint and the endless suicides Stiles has been running at lacrosse practice.

It only takes minutes to reach the nemeton, and it looks exactly the same as he remembers. There’s no scent trail, even here, but Derek can smell ash on the air and there are hints of Scott in the wind, gone too fast for him to latch onto.

“Where is he? _Scott!_ ”

“Underground I guess.”

Stiles gapes, “Under _ground?_ ”

Derek nods, finding the gap in the roots he remembers, pushing dead leaves aside and revealing the entrance.

“Oh my god. _Oh my fucking god_.”

He makes Stiles wait, goes down first, finding the passage tight and scratchy but safe enough. Stiles clatters through, dragging the damn bat with him and stumbling around in the dark while Derek’s eyes search out the one shape that’s moving just a little.

Stiles’ flashlight comes on, sweeping around, casting shadows and making the place somehow creepier, until it lands on Scott, curled on his side on a thick root that seems to almost cradle him. Stiles shouts wordlessly, tripping forward and moving the flashlight to his teeth so he can runs his hands across Scott, feeling for his pulse, his breathing.

“He’s alive,” Derek says, but it doesn’t sound convincing, even to him. Scott’s heart is beating but the skin Derek lays his hand on is cold, and when he rolls him, carefully, the light picks up a long claw mark under his arm, along the brachial artery. It’s bleeding slowly and steadily, rather than spurting like it might in a human, but it should have healed. There’s a terrifying amount of blood under him, some of it old and crusted enough to have been there hours, the rest soaking into the tree, and the whole situation is making Derek’s skin crawl. It’s not _right_.

Stiles is getting over his initial relief, heart-rate ramping up as he shakes Scott and gets no response, higher still when he sees the blood and demands to know why Scott isn’t healing.

He very nearly stops breathing when Derek shakes his head in way of an answer.

“We have to get him out of here!”

“Yeah.”

Derek slides an arm under Scott’s body, another under his legs and heaves. He gets half a moment to wonder why Scott suddenly weighs twice as much before there’s a roar of sound and the roof collapses in on them. 

It doesn’t come down hard enough that Derek loses consciousness, but it’s more than enough to stun him. His senses come back too slowly for comfort, ears ringing, but Stiles is there, pressed against his side, his first instinct to get close to Derek and that’s... something he’ll need to have feelings about later. His heartbeat still isn’t registering over the ringing in his ears, but the body at his side is moving. 

Scott’s still in his arms, shielded from most of the debris. Stiles is saying something, pushing his way through the dirt and fractured roots covering his body.

“I can’t-” Derek tries to get out, only to get a lungful of dust and lose his breath to coughing. Stiles keeps talking, in rhythm with the pressure of the hand that’s made its way to Derek’s shoulder. Running his mouth for his own benefit more than Derek’s then. Though, the hum of Stiles’ voice is something akin to an anchor, even if Derek can’t make out a word he’s saying. 

He lets it echo, not trying to parse the meaning, just letting it be as he clears the dirt off himself, careful not to dump any on Scott in the process. It’s not the whole of the roof of the chamber that’s come down on them, but a decent layer of it, probably all that could knock loose onto them without the entire thing caving in. 

Even with the slightly higher roof, it feels so much smaller than the last time he was down here. He’s grown, of course, but he’s never quite prepared for how much a foot of height can change his perspective.

“I get that... stupid... but he’s...” Stiles’ words are starting to come together.

“What?” Derek tries, voice still croaking, because the tone of Stiles’ voice is fast rising to panic.

“I know he’s great,” Stiles repeats, “but the stupid tree can’t keep him, he’s _ours_.”

Derek wants to shut him down, to point out that the nemeton isn’t a person, doesn’t think like that. That whatever supernatural shitstorm is spiralling around this spot spewing out omens _is_ , it’s got nothing to do with Scott McCall being a ‘ray of sunshine’ or whatever Stiles is blathering now.

Only, Scott is entirely untouched in Derek’s arms, and the damn tree only seemed to take issue with them trying to _remove_ Scott. Instinct tells him that nothing can end well down here, but instinct is based on the past, and the past isn’t the present. 

“And if you’re going to try kidnapping my best friend,” Stiles is still ranting, “maybe don’t be a dumbass and throw out omens all over the place like a monologuing villain!”

“Perspective,” Derek says, cutting Stiles off in the brief moment he takes to catch his breath.

“What?” Stiles is staring at him, “did you hit your head? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three,” Derek growls, “and one behind your back probably.”

Stiles grumbles, but doesn’t correct him. “What does ‘perspective’ mean? If you’re going all silver-lining-optimist on me I really think you are concussed.”

“I mean,” Derek says, and it’s hard to keep the snap out of his voice, “Scott getting stuck down here is a bad thing, from _our_ perspective.”

“As opposed to what, the tree’s?”

“Yes.”

Stiles just looks at him for a long moment, and Derek’s learned this last year that this is the point where you sit back and watch the process happen.

“The omens were spiralling in,” Stiles says, slowly, “toward the nemeton, not away from it.”

“Yes.”

“The tree was powerful, and then it got cut down, which was dangerous.”

“Yes.”

“Scott wasn’t part of the pattern because he wasn’t an omen. Bad for us, but good for...”

“The nemeton,” Derek finishes. “It’s drawing power from Scott.”

It makes sense, and Derek hates to think that he’s the one that taught it this, taught the nemeton the power of young blood seeping into the soil.

“It’s good that, you know, the tree’s not trying to kill us,” Stiles says, “but that means something else is.”

Derek can feel it, now that he knows what he’s feeling for, like changing air pressure laced with static and nausea, creeping in. The nemeton’s been bleeding Scott slowly, carefully, enough to keep his heart beating, but for all he appreciates it not bleeding one of his pack dry, it’s not enough, and not fast enough.

Stiles pushes closer. He’s retrieved his flashlight and shines it on Scott’s form, and it’s a painful reminder of the year they’ve had that Stiles is taking the blood in calmly, a problem to solve. 

“We’re still screwed, aren’t we?” Stiles says. “It’s still coming.”

Derek say nothing in affirmation, because it’s not a question, it’s a fact, and they both know it. Then Stiles is looking at him, not for confirmation, but for a solution. 

He doesn’t have solutions. He didn’t have them last time and he doesn’t have them now, and after all this time, this whole year, he’s back, tangled in the roots of the nemeton and an impossible situation. The only difference this time is he’ll be leaving more people behind. A whole pack.

Pack.

Derek doesn’t let himself think about it, just leans over and sinks his teeth into his own arm, right in the same spot as the wound in Scott’s. It bleeds fast to start with, rushing fast from Derek’s arm to the dirt around him, only to start healing almost immediately.

“Fuck,” Stiles mutters, already way ahead of Derek’s epiphany. The kid had figured out teamwork long before Derek had even realised he would need to. He sticks the flashlight between his teeth, freeing up both hands to run over Scott’s sticky, bloody arm.

“Awh!” he says, “Do wit agaiwm.” Mouth still full of flashlight, he gestures at Derek’s arm, and Derek sinks his teeth in again. 

As soon as he pulls away, Stiles’ hands are there, rubbing a thick layer of dirt into the wound and Derek hisses, flinching. He might be a werewolf with extraordinary healing abilities, but that doesn’t mean shit doesn’t hurt. 

It works though. For a moment, the dirt simply soaks up the blood, then it crumbles away, and Derek keeps bleeding. Not fast enough to kill him, but fast enough that even in the dim light he can see the dirt around his knees turning a deeper shade of dark.

The staticky sickness keeps coming, close enough now that even Stiles can feel it, if his shudder is anything to go by. Derek’s blood is helping, he can feel it like an echo, soaking into the roots and rousing a dormant presence too ancient to ever really be dead. 

For all that being a werewolf isn’t really suited to sitting in classrooms, being one forces you to acquire a rather practical understanding of physics. You get good at knowing how far you can move in a split second, how fast that oncoming vehicle or hunter or werewolf is moving, whether or not you’ve got a hope in hell of intercepting it. 

Derek’s blood is working, adding to Scott’s and bringing the nemeton creaking to life far faster than it would have alone. 

They’re still not going to make it. 

“Ah shit,” Stiles says, and grabs Derek’s nearest hand. “Claws out, Sourwolf.”

And Derek, because he’s spent the last year learning (painfully) that in a crisis you comply first and get explanations later, extends his claws. 

And Stiles, because he’s spent the last year learning (frustratingly) that the only way to beat a werewolf’s reflexes is to catch them by surprise, swipes them hard across his own arm before Derek has a chance to pull away. 

Derek pulls back anyway, despite the damage having already been done. He’s figured out, before the first curse is out of his mouth, what Stiles is doing; and yes, he can feel, by the time the third curse is in the air, that it’s working. But he lets out the fourth, and the fifth because necessary or no, he doesn’t appreciate being used to hurt anyone, no matter how noble the cause. 

Stiles, for his part, lets them all sail over head. No challenge, no excuse. It’s an apology in the shape of an absence, and tonight, Derek’ll take it, and let his forgiveness take the form of a quiet acknowledgment that it’s working.

They never find out if it’s Stiles being human, or the simple fact that three is almost always more than two plus one, but when his blood hits the dirt, the entire nemeton lurches, more soil shaking down onto their heads as roots grow in high speed in a way that looks cool in movies but unexpectedly gruesome in real life. 

Derek has just enough time before the badness hits to drag Stiles into his arms alongside Scott. He’s not sure what his body can do to protect either of them, but right in this moment, it’s not an instinct he’s willing to fight. 

It hits, and the entire nemeton shakes with the impact. Derek’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it never comes. It doesn’t bounce off or dissipate so much as it just soaks in, changing as it goes like some sort of fucked up supernatural photosynthesis. For a long moment Derek is able to feel every drop of blood he’s fed into the tree, feels the process first hand. 

Then it’s done.

The moments after their luck plays out in favour are unpredictably difficult. Derek has lived too long and too hard to trust a near miss so easy. The rush of relief tempered by the need to stay ready. 

“Are we good?” Stiles asks, looking up and damn if he isn’t close. 

“Good as we ever are.”

His arm is still bleeding and there’s a thick smear of dirt and blood on Stiles’ neck, not to mention the blood he’s still bleeding himself, too heavily for a human and far too fast for comfort. 

When they try to take Scott this time there is no resistance. Derek lifts him carefully and the three of them clamber out from beneath the roots. The air smells singed, but the static is gone. 

The nemeton has grown. It’s nothing like the size it would have been, but where there was a stump there is now a tree, and Derek shivers to think how much it’s taken of the three of them to make that happen. 

+

Beacon Hills is quieter with a living nemeton. It will never be free from disaster, or supernatural intrusion, or humans who Think They Know What They’re Doing, but it doesn’t draw trouble the way it used to.

Their scars never quite heal properly, and it’s the first one Derek’s ever worn. It hums sometimes, a shiver in sympathy with the nemeton. An early warning system. Not perfect, not exhaustive, but it gives them the edge they need, more often than not. Enough that within a couple of years, the McCall-Hale territory is more secure than it’s been in decades. 

The Hale house has taken longer to rebuild, proceeded by long, circular arguments over the floor plan, neither Hale quite certain if they want to replicate the home their family burned in, or build something entirely different. 

It becomes a hybrid, appropriately. The footprint is the same, the stairs go in the same place, and Erica even discovers a mostly untouched piece of door frame with the heights of countless Hale children carved into it. 

They build the place slowly, keeping as much of the work within the pack as they can. Cora’s picked up a surprising amount of construction know-how in her time down South, and Lydia proves to be a capable architect. There’s bedrooms upon bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a kitchen with a table so large it could fit the whole pack twice over if they tried. 

Melissa and Deaton help them put together their own clinic room, and the Sheriff ensures their (mostly legal) armoury is adequately secured.

Derek does not share his sister’s aptitude for building. He’s good enough at “heaving bits of wood around” (Cora) and “working the hard hat and no shirt look” (Lydia), and he can successfully hammer in a nail, but much beyond that leaves him frustrated and full of splinters. 

After his fifth near-miss with a temper tantrum, Cora relegates his efforts to the garden, arguing they’re near enough to done anyway. The garden is torn between being an overgrown mess and a trampled, dried out patch of dirt, but somewhere under there are his dad’s flower beds, his mother’s vegie patch, Andrew’s herb garden.

Uncovering it all is slow going. Slower with each section he clears and revives and has to tend to as he goes. He has some memory of what to do, and the internet, and an ever-growing pile of gardening books beside his bed, but there’s always a new issue to manage.

He’s in one of the unclear vegetable beds, yanking out what should surely be an impossible quantity of rogue potatoes when Stiles comes out to find him. He’s carrying a cup of steaming tea in each hand and perches next to Derek on the raised edge.

“Last night was bad, huh?” he says, handing over a mug, and Derek can smell the carefully combined herbs in it.

Derek only nods, and drinks. The nightmares are less frequent, and quieter each time he has them. He only woke up the one person last night. Not bad for a house with incomplete sound proofing and a population of werewolves.

He’s had his hands in the dirt since dawn, and somewhere along the line he stopped thinking about it. There’s a small part of Derek that wants to snarl at Stiles for bringing it back up, but he doesn’t. Doesn’t snarl, doesn’t push it down. Lets it exist. Lets it pass.

“You gonna be okay for game night tonight?” Stiles asks, leaning into Derek’s shoulder, “I can make an excuse for you if not.”

“I don’t know how cheery I’ll be,” Derek says honestly. 

Stiles has the decency to at least try and muffle his snort, “Derek Hale, uncheerful at game night - how will we cope?”

“Jackass,” Derek says, and nudges Stiles just enough for the tea in his hands to _almost_ spill out over them.

“Really though,” Stiles says, “you know they like fussing over you.”

Logically, Derek knows this is true. He has entire lists of evidence to prove it (compiled by Stiles and cross-referenced by Lydia). 

“Do you believe it?” Stiles asks.

“No,” Derek says, because he doesn’t. Not yet, but he’s starting to want to.

“Do you trust me?”

He takes a long slow look around. Not to put off his answer so much as soak into it. Dirt under his nails, scent of torn leaves in the air, Cora cursing and dropping screws in the house behind them.

“I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> <3


End file.
